Don’t you hate it when writers are all, “I have a new book coming out,” but they don’t tell you what it’s about? Me too. How are you supposed to know whether you want to read it or not when you only have the cover to go on?​In this case though, the cover is awesome:

I had nothing to do with it. I take no credit. The cover is all down to the geniuses at Flatiron Books. It looks like sun and warm and mystery and promise. ​In the UK, they’ve sent out these gorgeous gold foil galleys with just a little bit of intriguing text. So same: warm, shiny, mystery, promise. Gold foil doesn’t usually say minimalism, but that’s just the kind of miracle the book designers at Headline Publishing pull off.

None of which really tells you what the book is about because covers are so much better when they aren’t on the nose.

But one still wants to know. So…

My sexy pitch is:This is a book about a family with a secret. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

My provocative pitch is:This is a book about how children change…and then change the world.

My romantic pitch is:This is a book about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family.

My what-the-hell-does-the-title-mean explanation is:This is a book about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again; parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts; children grow but not always according to plan.

And — thanks for being patient — my just-tell-me-what-the-damn-book-is-about pitch is:THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS tells the story of a family with five boys, the youngest of whom becomes a girl.

This post has been mostly informational. Pbbbttth. Next up: Intrigue. Personal revelations. Tell alls. All that good stuff.

I had all kinds of titles for this post. “Anew” was one. “Coming soon” was one. “My Very Mixed Feeling About Social Media” was one. “There Are No Secrets And Everyone Knows Everything About Everything And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It” was probably never going to be the title of this post, but only because it’s a little unwieldy, not because it isn’t true.

I’m afraid this blog post is going to be a little coy. Apologies. It’s hard to talk about stuff because stuff is overwhelming and because, as we’ve already discussed above, once you broach it on social media, there are no secrets and everyone knows everything about everything and there’s nothing you can do about it except share slowly and mindfully to begin with. So I don’t intend to be coy or withholding. But there’s more to come. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

I have a new book, This Is How It Always Is, coming out in January…about which more soon. I’ve been pretty absent on social media…about which also more soon. For the moment, suffice it to say this: thank you for sticking around; thank you for coming back. When you put a pic of your new book’s new cover up on facebook and the first thing that happens is that a lot of people you love love it (and you) back, it’s really a wonderful thing.

What this world needs now — and always — is love. This is how it always is. So thank you for sending love. And more (more love, more words, more art, more details) soon.

About The Author

Laurie Frankel writes novels (reads novels, teaches other people to write novels, raises a small person who reads and would like someday to write novels) in Seattle, Washington where she lives on a nearly vertical hill from which she can watch three different bridges while she's staring out her windows between words. She's originally from Maryland and makes good soup.